> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> [from a snotty profile of Chomsky in today's Guardian
> <http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,
> 6000,1605276,00.html>]
>
> "One of the good things about the internet is you can put up anything you
> like, but that also means you can put up any kind of nonsense. If the
> intelligence agencies knew what they were doing, they would stimulate
> conspiracy theories just to drive people out of political life, to keep them
> from asking more serious questions."
>
> _____________
>
>
> I'd be interested to see how uncle Noam would reconcile the above with what
> he said below in a 1990 interview. Perhaps he is he a born again
> 'inconsistency theorist'....:-
>
> Joe W.
>
> http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19900907.htm
>
> QUESTION: Well, do you feel also ... I mean, I know that you have advanced
> these arguments and a number of other people have also advanced these
> arguments -- they are there to be found by anyone who wants to seek them
> out.... But at the same time, I think there's a great effort in the
> mainstream media to write these arguments off as conspiracy theory.
>
> CHOMSKY: That's one of the devices by which power defends itself -- by
> calling any critical analysis of institutions a conspiracy theory. If you
> call it by that name, then somehow you don't have to pay attention to it.
> Edward Herman and I, in our recent book, Manufacturing Consent, go into this
> ploy. What we discuss in that book is simply the institutional factors that
> essentially set parameters for reporting and interpretation in the
> ideological institutions. Now, to call that a conspiracy theory is a little
> bit like saying that, when General Motors tries to increase its market
> share, it's engaged in a conspiracy. It's not. I mean, part of the structure
> of corporate capitalism is that the players in the game try to increase
> profits and market shares; in fact, if they didn't, they would no longer be
> players in the game. Any economist knows this. And it's not conspiracy
> theory to point that out; it's just taken for granted. If someone were to
> say, "Oh, no, that's a conspiracy," people would laugh.
>
> Well, exactly the same is true when you discuss the more complex array of
> institutional factors that determine such things as what happens in the
> media. It's precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory. In fact, as you
> mentioned before, I generally tend to downplay the role of individuals --
> they're replaceable pieces. So, it's exactly the opposite of conspiracy
> theory. It's normal institutional analysis -- the kind of analysis you do
> automatically when you're trying to understand how the world works. And to
> call it conspiracy theory is simply part of the effort to prevent an
> understanding of how the world works.
>
> QUESTION: Well, I think also the term has been assigned a different meaning.
> If you look at the root of the term itself -- conspire, to breathe together,
> breathe the same air -- I mean, it seems to suggest a kind of shared
> interest on the part of the people "breathing together." It just seems that
> the word has been coopted for a different use now.
>
> CHOMSKY: Well, certainly, it's supposed to have some sort of sinister
> meaning; it's a bunch of people getting together in back rooms deciding what
> appears in all the newspapers in this country. And sometimes that does
> happen; but, by and large, that's not the way it works. The way it works is
> the way we described in Manufacturing Consent. In fact, the model that we
> used -- what we called the propaganda model -- is essentially an
> uncontroversial guided free market model.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk